Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the May 2010 Breath and Breathing Report.

We had an extraordinary week in Kazakhstan. The city of Almaty is such a contrast of ancient energies and modern features. The center of the city is full of glass office buildings, and the city itself is surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Icy cold rivers rush through many parts of the city. What a wonderful place to breathe; and what a perfect time to breathe. Spring was exploding all around us. You could almost watch the flowers blooming and the leaves on the trees opening from moment to moment!

Between forty and fifty people took part in the six day intensive. It was beautiful to see how our commitment and devotion to healing and growth create exactly that result! On the final day, each person was invited to create their own spiritual breathing meditation or exercise—combining breath with thought, movement, sound or visualization. My body is still humming and my heart is still glowing with the life changing moments we shared. Endless love and gratitude flow out to Ella Li, and to all of her “Orion” club members. 

Now I am in Irkutsk, Siberia. We are finishing the 5-day intensive here. Danil and Peter have done such a great job or organizing this event. Another 45 people have been throwing out all the stops and going for the gold! It is such a delight to see the changes in people who explore the art of spiritual breathing. Their faces change. Features soften, eyes sparkle, bodies relax and rejuvenate, and hearts open to love. 

For some, the first couple of days of an intensive like this can be a real challenge. Old thought patterns and emotional habits can have the force of weights or shackles as people begin to rise up and move forward into a new way of being. But for those who persist in the process and trust in themselves, a moment comes when everything clears. There is a sense of lightness and a feeling peace; there is a freedom and a feeling of coming home. 

Next stop on the path is Ufa, Bashkortostan for a week, and then on to Lithuania. On May 25, we’ll be back in Moscow. From June 8-14 we are in St. Petersburg. After that, it’s Italy and France. Check the schedule at www.breathmastery.com. Don’t be surprised if things in your life suddenly line up or come together, allowing you to join us in Europe!

Along the way, I am enjoying my commitment to being a master trader—delighting in the process of creating a huge amount of money! Toby is an impeccable coach and mentor. He is the embodiment of elegance, clarity and integrity, keen observation, intuition and peacefulness. Our group continues to grow and prosper, as we trade away our fear loss in return for the profit of inner trust!

Best of all, everything that we are learning to ensure outrageous financial success is also being used to improve every other area of our lives, including health, relationships, and our spiritual practice. It’s been a fun challenge lately because while it’s 9 am in New York, it’s 10 pm here! I am so happy to have the breath as a tool for relaxing, energizing, clearing, and re-focusing, after a 12 hour day of teaching and facilitating! 

So, let me tell you about what we are doing at the seminars and trainings on this tour. We are applying breathwork as a force for physical, emotional, and psychological health and growth. We’re practicing spiritual breathing for personal and planetary awakening. We are using conscious breathing to clear away all blocks to embodying our highest self.

Being a Breathworker means partnering with people who are devoted to being the best that they can be. We have the sacred honor of being present while people bare their souls to themselves. We have the privilege of sharing one of the most natural and empowering methods of spiritual purification and enlightenment in the world today. 

It is common to think in terms of a practitioner doing something “to” or on behalf of the client. This naturally implies that the practitioner is responsible for what happens during the session, while the client plays a passive role in the process. And it naturally follows that the results of the session depend on the skill of the practitioner or the facilitator, rather than on the internal resources of the client. 

With breathwork nothing could be further from the truth. Breathwork is a “do with” process not a “do to” one. Results are based on the inner wisdom and readiness of the breather. We simply demonstrate and share the ability to engage and activate our own creative energies and healing resources. Breathwork puts the responsibility for change where it belongs: on the breather. The process is by nature and definition self-empowering. 

Most self-help processes depend heavily on the skill of the facilitator. If the facilitator is distracted, tired, or just having a bad day, then you can expect a less than satisfactory, or even a counterproductive experience. This is not true of breathwork. The fact is, you can be marginally skilled at doing breathwork and still facilitate remarkable changes within yourself and others. 

Breathwork relies on the inherent wisdom and ability of the individual–wisdom and ability that many people don’t even know they have. We truly are amazing, magnificent beings, capable of much more than we have been led to believe. Direct experience in the practice of spiritual breathwork proves it again and again, at every stop on the path. And being with people when they awaken to this is utterly fulfilling.

In addition to mastering relaxation, and various breathing techniques and breath-energy exercises and meditations, the focus of Breathwork is on expanding our consciousness. It’s about re-programming, it’s about raising the quality of our thoughts—it’s about understanding and mastering our mind.  

From the womb till about five years old, deep brain programming takes place. Infants and young children are like sponges. They have no ability to question the programming that is being installed. They are basically in a hypnotic trance. Every impression is downloaded directly into their subconscious mind.

Pre-birth impressions are followed by post-birth programming: family, religious, cultural and societal conditioning. We perceive reality through these programs or conditioned beliefs. You see what you have been programmed to see. You feel what you have been conditioned to feel. What is your favorite food? Do you really think that if you had been born in a different culture with different traditions, that you would have the same tastes?

Our mind-body systems are programmable in the same way that computers are. Your mind is not your brain. The CPU chip is not the same as the memory in a computer. Your brain is a physical mass, the mind is an energy field that permeates and surrounds your whole body. Everything is energy. And every cell of your body is a programmable computer chip—capable of input, output, and memory storage.

You have two minds: conscious and subconscious. (Have you ever tried to change your mind only to discover that your mind has a mind of its own?) Subconscious beliefs are the main reasons that we have to struggle to achieve our conscious desires. Will power can temporarily override a subconscious program, but if the program is not re-written, little change will occur—the old pattern will most certainly return and win in the end.

The conscious mind is volitional. The subconscious mind is habitual. The conscious mind sets goals and judges results. The subconscious mind monitors the functions of the body (muscle movements, heart rate, digestion, etc.). The conscious mind thinks abstractly. The subconscious mind thinks literally. The conscious mind is time bound—separating past and future. The subconscious mind is timeless—past and future are simultaneous.

The conscious mind has limited processing capacity (about 2,000 bits per second). The subconscious mind has expanded processing capacity (about 4 billion bits per second). The conscious mind has very short term memory (about 20 seconds). The subconscious mind has very long term memory. It remembers every single thought, wish, attitude, belief, event, or experience.

The conscious mind can only be aware of 1 to 3 events at a time. The subconscious mind can process thousands of events at the same time. If your conscious mind desires a goal that your subconscious mind disagrees with… guess which mind will win! So making a conscious change is almost useless, unless something also changes in the subconscious. 

It’s the subconscious mind that allows you to walk (even though the decision to walk may be conscious). Without the subconscious ability to manage the complex task of walking, all you would have would be the thought of walking. The same goes for any of the thousands of other skills you have acquired in life, from tying your shoes to using a fork, from signing your name to riding a bicycle.

The fact is most people spend their lives subconsciously reacting to things rather than consciously creating them. Most people are surprised to learn that almost all of their behavioral and thought patterns are directed by their subconscious mind, not their conscious mind. Have you noticed that you can drive a car while day-dreaming? It is estimated that as much as 99% of cognitive activity is non-conscious!

Subconscious beliefs are like hidden software programs and our day to day experiences are like automatic printouts of those programmed beliefs. Because of our subconscious programs, we spend most of our lives reacting to situations and circumstances, rather than determining or creating them. 

In a way, our subconscious mind is more child-like than it is wise. We need to give it conscious instructions. We can’t depend on it for advice or understanding. We depend on a higher consciousness for that. We need to turn to something like our ‘super-conscious’ mind for instructions and advice, and also to get confirmation about the wisdom of our conscious choices and decisions. (Breathwork is the perfect tool for this.)

For everyone, certain parts of your life are working quite nicely, and other parts are not. Look at your life honestly. What is working and what is not? Does your life reflect the awesome greatness that is the real you? Are you expressing the true magnificence of your being? Does your everyday life match the life of your dreams? 

If you have a conscious desire but you are not manifesting it, then you must have a subconscious belief that is in opposition to it. If you have a conscious intention but you are failing to achieve it, then you must have a subconscious belief that is in conflict with it. If your conscious and subconscious minds are not aligned, then fulfilling your heart’s desire will be a constant struggle, and living your dream will be next to impossible. 

In the practice of breathwork we focus on changing the negative or limiting subconscious beliefs that cause our suffering or limit our freedom and power. We clear the beliefs that block our awareness of the love, joy, peace, and pleasure in life. Breathwork involves rooting out self-sabotaging beliefs, and replacing them with self-supporting beliefs. 

It is important to realize that an old deep seated program is no harder to change than a new shallow one. Energy is energy, whether it’s been held in the mind for three minutes or three decades. Like a computer file: you can open it, edit it, or delete it in the same amount of time, whether it has been stored in your hard drive for ten minutes or ten years.

In Breathwork, we consider that problems are actually opportunities—opportunities to grow. And we have learned that very often, the big problem you want to get rid of may actually be the solution to a much bigger problem. What may seem to be an inability to do one thing may actually be the ability to do (or to avoid) something else. So it may not be in your best interest to remove a problem without realizing the purpose that it serves.

Our subconscious mind doesn’t choose actions; it simply reacts in an automatic fashion. Our higher-conscious mind (some call it the super-conscious mind) is different from the other two minds. The job of our higher consciousness is to guide our spiritual growth and evolution. Our conscious mind is like a higher conscious mind “in training.”

You can communicate with your subconscious mind in order to rewrite outdated programs that no longer serve you, and align them with your current desires and goals.
Because the subconscious mind controls motor function such as muscle movement, we can use this built-in biofeedback mechanism to find out if the subconscious agrees or disagrees with a conscious intention. When there is a conflict between a conscious intention and a subconscious belief, the signal strength to our muscles is reduced and it can be felt. That’s how kinesiology works. Muscle testing is really “mind testing.”

Each of us also can also find a unique way to connect with our higher consciousness. It is up to us to open, relax, and breathe our way into conscious contact with our higher self. The problem is that this connection is so obvious and so constant, that we overlook it. In trying too hard or in using too much effort we actually create a contraction that blocks our awareness to this sublime aspect of ourselves.

Habits of thinking, habits of feeling, emotional and behavioral habits…these things can either weaken or strengthen our creative and healing abilities. For example, constant anger can causes illnesses like arthritis, heart disease, and cancer. Anger is an immune suppressant. It has been said that generating anger is like drinking poison and waiting for someone else to die!

Health issues are often (if not always) associated with our spiritual state. Symptoms are messengers. We shouldn’t automatically try to kill them or eliminate them with drugs or surgery. Instead, we can learn what they are trying to teach us. We can download new potential beliefs, new software programs, for example by using affirmations, prayers, etc. 

There is no such thing as an “incurable” disease. If you are going to doubt anything in life, doubt your own limitations! We are divine beings having a human experience. It’s time to release yourself from the self-inflicted prison of your own thinking. It’s time to clean up your subconscious mind!

One simple way of clearing negative or limiting beliefs is by using affirmations. The idea is to repeat them out loud to yourself and to others, write them down, post them around your house, record them and listen to them while you sleep. Be creative! If you’d like a list of sample positive affirmations/beliefs let me know, and I’ll send you a collection.

All for now.
Love to all,
Dan